


Unbound

by Yeah_JSmith



Series: Ruff Stuff [2]
Category: Zootopia (2016)
Genre: Aftercare, Communication, F/M, Fluff, Mentions of collaring, POV Judy Hopps, Pre-Negotiated Kink, RACK - Freeform, Responsible BDSM, Restraints, Smut, Spanking, Subspace, taking care of each other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-14
Updated: 2018-02-14
Packaged: 2019-03-18 02:05:52
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 13,361
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13672011
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yeah_JSmith/pseuds/Yeah_JSmith
Summary: Her stomach is in knots and her paws are shaky, and if she were anatomically capable she might be sick all over the bed. Subspace is hard, nebulous, unpredictable. But if she’s perfectly honest with herself, they both need this. So they’ll reach for it, together, and deal with the fallout as it comes.





	1. Trust and Responsibility

**Author's Note:**

> Happy Media-Defined-Heterocentric-Love-Inspired-and-Pushed-by-Corporate-Greed Day. Have some nontraditional romance and indulge in something decadent.
> 
> [Ruff Stuff, the Playlist](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLFsMzmYsLKfO4D5y1PUHlsn_epYk4ROpn)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nick and Judy try for subspace. Revelations come to light.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a continuation of the AU where Nick and Judy met while she was in college. At this point, she’s finished with her police training and he’s established himself as a PI. The smut comes in chapter 3 (the final chapter), so if you really want to skip chapters 1 and 2, that’s fine...but who knows, you might like non-smutty healing kink and aftercare.
> 
> In case the hints in the text aren’t enough: Nick and Judy planned this scene together, and at this point they’ve been together romantically for 3.5 years and friends for longer than that. They know each other’s bodies, desires, and behaviors well enough to plan and execute a session like this. But it’s not for newbies and it’s not for casual scenes. Trust me on this: it is what I do for a living. People pay me to punish them. If someone proposes a scene like this without prior experience, run the fuck away.

Standing in the corner is the worst. It’s a funny kind of punishment; it’s not physically taxing, nor is it particularly humiliating, at least not when you don’t have a hundred brothers and sisters passing through the room snickering at you and hoping to loiter long enough to see you get a thrashing. Still, it’s the worst. It makes you itch between your scapulae. It makes your head and shoulders heavy. All you want to do is turn around, but you know you can’t. All you  _ can _ do is keep your eyes on the wall, think about what happened and what’s coming next, and experience the shame of it. That’s probably why Nick loves it so much. He hates it in the moment, but sometimes he’ll say he  _ needs to think  _ and then brat just enough that Judy has no choice but to send him to the corner or call off their agreement. He’s still not great at asking for favors, but he has his own tells, his own method of asking that’s endearing in its own way. Even if it’s hard.

And it  _ is  _ hard. Nick wants so desperately to be good, to achieve some as-of-yet undefined level of “goodness” that she  _ already  _ sees in him. Judy tells him all the time how good he is, how wonderful he is, but sometimes instead of reassuring him it pushes him into pushing boundaries. It’s clear at this point that he doesn’t believe on more than an intellectual level that she’s here to stay. She knows he wants to believe that she’s not going anywhere, but whatever mental block has him thinking he’s not good enough also has him – absurdly – thinking he’s not good enough  _ for her.  _ She’s lucky he respects her enough to accept that she wants him around, even if he doesn’t always understand why.

But they’ll get past it. They will. Hopefully tonight will help. There’s a whole week before she starts at Precinct 1 and he’s not taking any new cases for a week, so it’s the perfect time to try for subspace. They’ve been talking about it for over two years now, since before he got licensed as a PI, but things always come up. Hard cases that leave him in the least ideal place emotionally. Physically and mentally taxing exams at the ZPA. Schedules that leave them feeling like ships in the night. Her subconscious reluctance to dive so deep.

(Her stomach is in knots and her paws are shaky, and if she were anatomically capable she might be sick all over the bed. Subspace is hard, nebulous, unpredictable. But if she’s perfectly honest with herself, they both need this. So they’ll reach for it, together, and deal with the fallout as it comes.)

His tail twitches and his shoulders scrunch. He’s uncomfortable, standing with his nose in the corner, wearing nothing but the collar he commissioned and bought for himself a year and a half ago. It’s much more flexible now, and the leather around the buckle is soft even though he takes better care of  _ it  _ than he does of himself. Judy watches him stew with admiration, with longing, with...well. With love, obviously. She could say it every second of every day and it wouldn’t be enough to explain the swell in her. There just aren’t any words grand enough or expressive enough to explain how much of her heart he holds.

She couldn’t say it this morning, when she let him sleep in and, once he awoke, made him see stars. She couldn’t say it earlier, when they were eating dinner and teasing each other. Everything they’ve done today, from sex to watching the trashy sitcom they love to make fun of, has been leading up to this, so she couldn’t say it. She can’t wait until she’s allowed to again.

Nick doesn’t speak, because she told him not to. Regrettably, there isn’t much literature beyond anecdotes on the internet, but general consensus is that subspace is easier to reach if the sub’s head is already a little quieter. Nick doesn’t respond well to the usual suggestions – petting, rubbing, light sexual stimulation – but corner time helps quiet the chatter in his skull, and Judy’s familiar enough with his body language to know when he’s ready. He’s not there  _ yet,  _ but he will be soon; he just has to push through the final stages here, the twitch, the desperate desire to escape. 

All he has to do is turn around. Tonight, he doesn’t even have to safeword out of the corner; all he has to do is  _ turn around,  _ and the whole scene is over. She almost wishes he would. But he doesn’t. He’s never used a safeword, and that sometimes throws her into a bit of a tailspin; is she boring? Is she too intimidating? Is she too soft? Is he afraid of her? Is she a bad domme? But whenever she asks, he just laughs and says he trusts her to do what’s best for him, and that he’s never  _ not  _ appreciated her treatment.

Breathe. Deep breath in, deep breath out. Breathe-in-in-in, breathe-out-out-out. Her heart is in her throat. They’ve had this scene prepared for weeks now, but still, she’s nervous. 

Water bottles.

Tools in a bag on the bed under a sheet, so he won’t be able to see them even though he already knows what they are.

Leg restraints. Optional arm restraints – only to be used if he wants them or feels like he needs them.

Every single blogger, no matter what species or digestive class, recommends using a muzzle or on predators when trying to power through to subspace this way. There is a slim chance of what the community calls primal regression, and it could be dangerous even for same-species couples. Judy acknowledges the risks. She also refuses to offer the option. There’s a thick strap next to the restraints if he thinks he’s going to grind his teeth or bite his tongue, but muzzles…

When he told her about the Scouts incident, he refused to tell her the troop number or the names of the mammals who should have been his friends. It’s probably for the best. She’s never hated strangers before, but she hates them; they took a sweet, precocious kit and tried to break him. The last thing she wants to do is traumatize Nick further when they’re working so hard to get past the bad stuff.

Breathe in. Breathe out.

She stands, watching his tail twitch, and checks the restraints again. They’ve had just over two and a half years to invest in some interesting things, and their most recent acquisition is a gorgeous little apparatus that looks a bit like a gymnastics vault, if that vault had leg straps on the front and cork leather cuffs on the back. The surface of it is padded; it looks comfortable enough that she could probably sleep on it, though Nick might not be able to fit his legs unless he curled up very tightly. The padding and surface area will help keep him breathing normally and give him adequate neck support during their scene.

Judy doesn’t understand it, but aside from standing in the corner, Nick’s favorite punishment is spanking; sometimes he finds it erotic, but she suspects that’s more about the forgiveness than the act itself. She never liked being spanked. It was painful and humiliating, especially the part where she had to stand and apologize at dinner for making a racket about it. But Nick gets a lot out of it, so they chose it as their vehicle tonight. These restraints, hopefully, will help them achieve their goal.

When they’re not using their newest apparatus as intended, it can double as a dinner table after a thorough cleaning and under a checkered tablecloth, but tonight they’re breaking it in, and Judy suspects they’ll get some good use out of it in the future. It’ll be nice to not have to jerry rig something every time Nick wants to be restrained.

Breathe-in-in-in. Breathe-out-out-out.

There’s a nice fruit mix in their mini-fridge for afterward. It’s still fresh.

Water bottles? Yes, they’re still there.

She wills her paws to stop shaking. Nick isn’t shifting anymore and his shoulders are relaxed. It’s time to go; he’s ready, and now she has to be. This is new. It’s a little terrifying. What if she hurts him? What if he goes too deep and she doesn’t read his cues right? What if she’s just really  _ bad  _ at this and all of their preparation, their discussions, their purchases, amount to nothing? She wants this so badly. Nick wants it, and she wants it  _ for  _ him. Her own enjoyment is incidental at this point. What if –

No. No more what ifs. She can do this. She’s Judy Hopps; she eats fear for breakfast. She loves Nick, and he loves her, and even if this doesn’t work, it will be a learning experience. But he won’t be calm if she isn’t.

Breathe.

Breathe.

“Turn around,” she tells Nick, and he does so. Their room is small enough that it only takes a couple of steps to reach him. Judy grasps the smooth ring at the front of his collar and brings him down to eye level. “What’s the safeword?”

“Sunflower,” he says promptly.

She leads him by the ring to their new apparatus and nudges him into the leg straps. Bending down to close the buckles, she asks again, “What’s the safeword?”

“Sunflower,” he says again. There’s a  _ slip  _ sound and Judy knows without looking that Nick chose to put the wrist restraints on himself. She helps secure those too, and then comes back around to take position. Buckled neatly into place, legs shoulder width apart, paws secure in front of him, he’s...just gorgeous. She’s so lucky he chose her. But she can’t tell him that yet.

Even now, despite how relaxed he looks (after about 45 minutes of corner time, the longest they’ve ever gone), she worries. It’s her responsibility to keep him safe. He trusts her, maybe more than he should, and right now that trust is the most precious thing in the world. The last thing she wants to do is shatter it. And in her heart of hearts, she knows he’s not going to use their safeword. He can take a surprising amount of punishment, especially when he wants it (though he would call it a need), and the  _ one  _ time he used “yellow” it was to ask if  _ she  _ was okay.

As she moves her bag of tools from the bed to the floor, she realizes this might be their Hail Mary. Depending on how this goes, they might not be able to live like this anymore. But she can’t afford to let those thoughts get in her way. This isn’t about her, and it’s not about them. It’s about Nick, and getting him to where he needs to be.

Judy puts a paw on his lower back and strokes the fur there with her thumb. She knows from experience that full-on petting would bring him out of the headspace he’s in now, but small touches should – in theory – add to the experience. Raising her other paw, she takes a breath, and then swings it down. The  _ whump  _ sound of contact makes her nose twitch, but she raises her paw again to get the other side of his rump. This part’s important if they want to be able to go for longer.

Using both of her paws in flat-pawed strikes, she works him over, across his firm, pretty cheeks and up and down his thighs. This would be easier if she had him across her lap, but the scene is already in play, and besides, there’s a kind of intimacy in over-the-knee spankings that he doesn’t want here. She does. She wants it very badly. But that can be saved for another night, when they don’t have a specific goal in mind.

In this time of quiet honesty, while she warms him up with her paws for the main event, she can admit that she loves the power she has over him. When he asked her to spank him for the first time, she didn’t know what to think. She was afraid that she wouldn’t be able to hurt him like that, knowing from personal experience how awful it was. But she did all right, and it’s brought them closer than she ever thought she could be with another mammal. In order for this to work, they both have to trust each other implicitly, and – Nick’s self-esteem issues aside – they do. 

He keeps his breathing even as she increases the force of her blows and decreases the speed. For the right kind of pain, quality is more important than quantity. The unfortunate reality is that foxes have a lot of fluff, which means it takes _time_ to get Nick to start feeling it. By the time this is over, it’s possible that her arms will be just as sore as his backside will be. He’s talked about shaving his hindquarters, like they do for surgeries and treatment of bad wounds, but she won’t allow that. She rarely ever gives him _orders_ beyond their scenes, but safety issues – like the one that says he’s not allowed to skip meals anymore – need to be enforced. 

She decreases the force of her swings and increases the tempo, trying to avoid any particular rhythm. It’s a trick to keep him from counting. If he starts counting, he’ll go back into his head. They’re almost ready for his real spanking now, but first, she allows herself to run her paws through the fur on his rump. He flexes, but otherwise stays quiet. Good.

Judy bends down to pick up a paddle. It’s a thick piece of plastic lined with leather, holes interspersed with steel studs. It’s designed for a heavy, thudding kind of pain rather than a sting. Giving it a test swing, she watches Nick’s left ear twitch and his lower back muscles tense as they both hear the air rushing through the holes. She loves that sound almost as much as she loves what it does to him. In terms of sensation, there isn’t much difference to a solid paddle, which she knows from testing it out on herself, but the psychological effect is beautiful. Lining up behind him, she raises it and waits until he relaxes before bringing it down on the space where his thighs meet his cheeks. Bent over as he is, that’s the place that should hurt the most.

The force of her first two strikes pushes his hips forward into the restraining apparatus, but she eases off immediately, trading force for time. This is going to take a longer session than they’ve ever done before, but there’s only so much punishment one mammal can take. If she wants to push him over the edge, it needs to be a marathon, not a sprint. She loses herself, for a minute or so, in the whistling sound of air through the holes and the  _ thud  _ of leather on flesh through fur, but before she allows a rhythm to form, she changes grip and hits as hard as she can twice on his left side and once on his right. The air goes out of his lungs, as it tends to do when he feels something new. She doesn’t stop, instead choosing to go back to softer strikes.

She wants to tell him he’s doing well. It’s a sticky desire, caught in her throat because she knows she  _ can’t.  _ It would bring him out of the scene.

Once again, she delivers three hard, precise strikes, this time all on his right side. Once again, he wheezes. That’s a sound she’s come to love, too. This enjoyment of inflicting pain on someone she cares about was a surprise, but considering how much Nick enjoys it, she can’t say she’s upset about how this all turned out.

Judy reduces her strikes to little taps, upward motions that almost drag the edge of the paddle along the swell of his rear, just to get him relaxed again. If he’s too tense, that will ruin the scene as well. This is  _ entirely about him;  _ she has to remember that, no matter how delicate this gets. Nick un-clenches, and she swings hard again, this time giving him six harsh strikes, three on each side alternating randomly. He whimpers.

_ Oh. _

She loves his little noises, probably because she just loves him. She taps a few times and then delivers two final harsh strikes to his left side, listening for another whimper. He doesn’t fail to deliver. She runs her paws through his fur again and closes her eyes briefly as he sucks air in between his teeth. Dropping the paddle for now, she reaches into the bag to pull out a long, thin piece of fiberglass wrapped in leather and topped with a flat slapper. This is one of his favorites, and because he likes it so much, she can’t help but like it too.

Without giving him time to think about what’s coming next, she strikes with the slap end of the crop, eliciting another, louder whimper. She swallows hard as she strikes again. He’s getting to that place where he’s unreservedly responsive – not  _ quite  _ there, but close – but they’ve never been beyond it. Partly, she thinks as she strikes a softer blow on his left thigh, it’s her fault. As much as he wants to reach subspace, she’s afraid of taking him there. It’s not fair to him. She has to do better.

She  _ will  _ do better.

She allows a soft but sturdy rhythm to take her while she monitors his physiological responses. No shivers, no panting. He’s not hurting himself in an effort to take more punishment, so that’s good. He’s shifting now, or at least trying to, making little noises she’s not sure he’s aware of. Not exactly whimpers, not exactly yips, but something in between. Before he can pick up on the rhythm, she changes her angle and directs the slapper to drag over his anus with each short, sharp strike. He really does yelp at this. It never fails. She smiles as she shifts her grip and swing again to make contact with the lower part of his thighs, making sure not to get too close to his knees.

Her heart swells as he begins to twist in his cuffs, and her paws tingle again, this time for a different reason. His pain is heady, powerful – and  _ hers,  _ all hers – because he trusts her to do this for him. He trusts her so much that he’s made himself entirely vulnerable. She can feel her heart beating in her throat and it feels for a moment like her head is filling with helium. She applies more force to her next few swings with the slapper and then changes her grip again, moving her hips to be slightly farther away for her next volley.

It’s important to keep the crop from wrapping when using the fiberglass to land strikes, so she slows down. One strike every few seconds; one precise, carefully-measured strike. Nick’s noises move from distressed to something darker, pained yelps interspersed with little whines in time with his twisting. She forces herself to keep going when he lets out a real cry of pain. This is the place she never allows them to move beyond. This is the final step of her comfort zone.

But Nick needs this, and she made a promise.

Judy lays her final ten crop strikes along his anus again, this time eliciting something like a bark. She’s never heard that before; maybe it’s a good sign. After dropping the crop, she runs her nails along the skin under the fur and he yelps again at the sensation. Good, it’s working. Trying to stay steady despite the joyful, dizzy sensation working its way through her head and limbs, she reaches down and picks up a thong. Nick wants to feel this for a while, and Judy means to deliver. They’ve only used this particular implement once, and even a light beating with their tawse left him sore for a couple of days. She intends to leave her mark on him for a week. There aren’t many implements capable of that, but this one works splendidly, if used correctly.

And she will use it correctly. Judy practiced for weeks on a target board before she even thought about using it on her beloved fox.

This next part is going to be the hardest part for her to follow through with. He supplied her with a list of errors, and she dutifully memorized it, but she doesn’t agree with most of them. She’s doing this for him, and that’s enough to keep her going, but...the only time he wants her to talk during this is to scold and degrade him. He knows himself better than she ever could...but still.

_ Do it for Nick. _

“You’re really a worthless piece of shit,” she tells him, hardening her voice to something vicious and angry. He whines at her first two strikes, though she’s not sure if it’s the impact of the implement or her words that gets to him. She strikes again, harder this time, and ignores his cry of pain as she continues, “Selfish.”

She strikes twice.

“Self-centered.”

_ Slap. _

“Whiny and lazy.”

She bites her lip as his cries edge toward shrieks. These aren’t fun sounds, and they shouldn’t be adding to her giddiness, but they are. She swings again, hoping to mask the sound of her dry swallowing. “You can’t tell the difference between love and pity.”

She won’t say the last part of that statement, though. Hopefully he’ll forgive her for it, but she refuses to tell him that she pities him. This scolding is based in the lies he tells himself, but she won’t allow that one through. Anything but that one. She’s not strong enough for that one.

_ Slap. Slap. _ She loses herself in sound, bracing herself for what comes next. 

“You’ve been conning everyone since you could walk, but nobody more than yourself. You really thought you could be more than what you are? You’re just a two-bit hustler working a game you’re not ready for.”

She watches him carefully for signs of danger and gentles her strikes, although with the tawse that doesn’t make much of a difference. He’s going to have sore wrists, with the way he’s been twisting, but...he’s calming now. Is this it? Is this what he’s been looking for? Is it the scolding or the pain? She strains to see over his shoulder, to make sure he’s not mouthing their safeword, but he isn’t. His eyes are glazed, his knees are weak, and his breathing is shaky – these are the signs!

“You know why you’re being punished? I’ll tell you why.” She lands four more strikes, harsher than she’s done thus far, and he makes some squeaking noises, but in comparison to the squalling from earlier, this is a heartening improvement. “It’s because you deserve it.”

She drops the tawse and spanks him with her paws again. He makes some more squeaking noises, but there is a  _ noticeable  _ difference. Quietly, she goes off-script and finishes, “But it’s okay, Nick. I love you, and I forgive you.”

He’s pliant in a way that he never has been before. She rubs his backside carefully, making sure to smooth the fur in places she gave extra attention to. His squeaks slide into noises that she won’t embarrass him by calling coos.

“Come on,” she says, bending down to unbuckle the leg straps first. She suspects she’ll need to support him once the wrist straps are off. As predicted, his legs don’t hold him when she lets his wrists go, but she’s just finished her police training, and she has enough muscle to easily get him to their bed. He crawls to their pillow, seemingly in a daze, and she resumes her petting as soon as he’s settled on his stomach. She runs her fingers through the fur on his upper back, his lower back. She’s gentle on his thighs – he’s going to be bruised in the morning – and she still pays careful attention to his physiological responses. The spanking may be finished, but the scene isn’t over until he comes down.

She leans over to kiss his thighs a few times, working his lower back again. She can’t help it. He’s so  _ wonderful  _ and – so much braver than she is. She scoots up to work her paws through his ruff and hold his muzzle. His eyes are still glazed over, but despite the damp spots on his face from his beating-induced tears, he’s smiling. She’s not sure if that’s a conscious thing.

“Nick,” she says hesitantly. Theoretically, she knows how to deal with someone in subspace. It’s not good for him to stay there  _ too  _ long; the endorphins aren’t meant to flood his system long-term. “Can you say something?”

“Hmm,” he says, squirming and nuzzling her paw.

Well, it’s a start. Like this, she can almost forget how harsh she had to be before he could  _ get  _ here, but not quite. She can feel herself coming down from what turned into a  _ high  _ there at the end, and her limbs begin to tremble. She tries to hold herself still while he’s nuzzling them, but she can’t, so she replaces her paws with her chest. She’s wearing a tank top, so it’s not the same, but it’s still her scent.

And it’s a risk to have his teeth at her neck when he’s like this, but she cares about keeping  _ him  _ safe more than she fears what random internet bloggers warned her about. 

She trails her nails up and down his back, at least in the places she can reach from her position under his muzzle. She wishes she could hear these happy little murmurs every day without having to spank him for an hour. She wishes he could just  _ love  _ himself, wishes he could see himself as she sees him.

“Talk to me, Nick,” she says again.

“Don’t wanna,” he replies, and she tries not to smile. That’s a very Nickish response. For all that he uses his mouth, he doesn’t often  _ talk.  _ He’s always honest with her, but he doesn’t volunteer information. 

“I just need to make sure you’re okay.”

“M fine. Perfect.”

She wishes she didn’t have to take this away from him, but  _ especially  _ without knowing his new chemical limitations, it’s not safe to leave him in this haze. “I need you to drink some water for me. Can you do that, Sweetheart?”

“Mm-hmm.”

She gropes for one of the water bottles on their nightstand and brings it close. She sits up, allowing him to drape his muzzle across her lap, while she opens the bottle. She’s not shaking so much now, which is good for not dropping the bottle or the cap. She holds it against his muzzle, waiting for him to either open his mouth or grab it with his paw. He chooses the latter option and sits up carefully while he pours the water down his throat.

She runs her paw over his knee. “Still doing okay?”

“I’ve never felt like this before,” he confesses, and lays his muzzle across her thighs. He drops the bottle to the bed, but that’s all right; it’s empty anyway.

“Do you need anything?”

“Just you,” he sighs, and snuggles in close. She reaches around to tug the sheets over him so he doesn’t get cold. 

Reluctantly, she warns, “We need to discuss this.”

“Yeah, but not right now. Just hold me and be happy with me.”

Snuggling with him and falling asleep together sounds so tempting, but she can’t. She needs to monitor Nick. He needs to eat. She needs to clean their toys and the restraint apparatus. They need to talk. So she strokes his headfur gently and listens to him breathe, determined to keep vigil for as long as it takes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There are mentions of spanking children in this. I want to make this very clear: _I do not condone this practice._ It is monstrous. I firmly believe that it is abuse, although the law does not classify it as such. If it’s abuse of an adult without consent, then it is child abuse, because children cannot consent. However, having grown up in the South, I can personally confirm that kids get the belt for frankly ridiculous reasons. I did: having a crush on a girl in my class. Being depressed. Cursing when I got my index finger slammed in the car door. Not finishing my plate. Some girls wore their bruises like badges of honor, and would compare size and color in the bathroom. The darker the bruise, the more badass you were. Bonus points if you had lines from a switch. The South is rife with shitty treatment of children, and since I’ve modeled Bunnyburrow after the region I grew up in, it makes sense for even loving parents to abuse their kids. It’s their culture. I wouldn’t characterize Bonnie and Stu as bad parents, but they certainly weren’t supportive, and they were ready to foist a bunch of anti-fox weapons on their adult offspring because they couldn’t entertain the idea that she could take care of herself. Clearly they were regressive when Judy was little. Going along with what everyone else says and does seems very true to them.


	2. Sweeter Still

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nick and Judy deal with the consequences of first-time subspace. Also they have coffee and Judy realizes some free things aren't worth the effort.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Reminder that they haven’t had the missing mammals case yet. The use of “savage” in this chapter is...well, not innocent, but ykwim. Also, yes, I did make fun of bad porn in here. It ain’t my fault I’m so drawn to trash. I’m fascinated by the grotesque.

As soon as she sits down with the bowl, he’s got his muzzle across her lap again. She doesn’t mind; his head is heavy, but he’s warm, and as long as he accepts the fruit from her paws he’s free to do whatever he likes with his head. While Nick is a superb cook, he isn’t very good at regularly and reliably feeding himself – it’s a holdover from his time of homelessness – but he always eats what she gives him. She likes taking care of her fox, and she likes to think he likes it too. He doesn’t have to rely only on himself anymore. He’s got her now.

“I’m so proud of you, Nick,” she says, holding out a pre-cut strawberry. He licks it from her fingers and tightens his grip around her waist. She gets another strawberry out of the bowl and adds, “I’m always proud of you.”

“I know that.” She never hears him speak like this, sleepy and without baggage, and it warms her heart. She wants to bottle this and give him a sip every time he’s feeling down. He scritches the base of her tail with his claws. “You’re the best, Judy.”

She leans down to kiss his brow – she can’t _not –_ and feeds him some blueberries. “How do you feel right now?”

“Good. Really good. You were...savage.”

“I’m sorry-”

“Please don’t. Don’t apologize. You were perfect, and it was great. Don’t make it weird.”

She makes a note to, sometime in the near future, explain to him why it is weird for her. Not right now, because this is still about him, but soon. He needs to understand that she can’t say those things on a regular basis. Punishing him, even as harshly as this, is one thing, but what he asked her to _say..._ she didn’t safeword out, because she wanted to be a good domme for him. And in the moment, with the buzz of physical exertion, causing pain, and pleasing him thrumming through her, she was okay with it. But she’s not so sure anymore, and their relationship is based in trust and honesty. Keeping that to herself would be antithetical to everything they value as a team.

“I love you,” she says, and offers a perfect blackberry instead of another apology.

“I believe you. And return that love.”

She bites her lip and looks away while he licks some more blueberries out of her paw. They have a rule about never saying “I love you too,” but he always finds some way to circumvent it and make her feel like a high schooler with a crush. It never feels like an echo, it feels like a guarantee. He’s good at that.

She looks down again and smiles at him. He doesn’t notice, but that’s okay. “Let’s get some more water in you.”

“Ugh.” He presses his nose to her hip and takes a deep, snuffling breath. She hopes she doesn’t smell too bad from the sweat. “If I drink more water, it’ll make me need to pee, and then I’ll have to let go.”

“And then you can come right back. I’m not going anywhere.”

“I…”

She leans over to look him in the eye. “You know I’m not going anywhere...right?”

Something undefined in his expression changes. “Yes. Wow. This is real.”

“I sure hope so,” she teases.

“No, no, this is _real.”_ He flexes his paws and, impossibly, wraps his arms around her even more tightly. “This whole time it’s felt like...we’re going to be together until you get tired of me. Until you come to your senses and realize I’m not good enough for you. I’m going to belong to you forever, but I guess I was – until now – just waiting for the axe to fall. I have never, not once, doubted your love for me, but I couldn’t accept that it’s _me_ you love, because I’m just...some random fox you collected during college. I’m Nick Wilde, and until I met you the only noteworthy thing I ever did was piss off a crime boss. I kept expecting you to wake up one day and realize that the mammal you loved was just a construct. But you see me and you love me anyway, don’t you?”

“I don’t love you _anyway,_ Nick,” she tells him, digging her paw into his ruff and scritching under his collar. “It doesn’t work like that, not for me. I don’t see an ideal mammal when I look at you. I know you have faults and flaws and I see them and they are part of you. I love you because of who you are, not in spite of it. You talk about belonging to me, but...I’m just as much yours as you are mine, even if it looks different. Now, I need you to drink a little more.”

“I will if you’ll make me a deal.”

She raises an eyebrow. “A deal?”

“Yeah. I’ll drink...and you’ll tell me how _you’re_ feeling. You keep asking me about how I’m dealing with this. How are you holding up?”

She gives him a second water bottle and ponders the question. It’s a hard one to answer, even though he’s mostly out of his haze from before and she’s not worried about disturbing him anymore. As he lazily un-caps the bottle – doing his best to keep as much contact with her as possible, it seems – she leans back against the headboard, keeping one paw on his upper back. “I’m still trying to process everything. I won’t lie to you, Nick, that last part...that was hard. I know you just wanted me to say all the things you tell yourself every day, but it felt like cruelty for the sake of being cruel. I _want_ to be good to you. I want to help you and show you how much I love you. And I do like beating you. The noises you make are amazing. I just don’t know if I can say that stuff to you.”

“You don’t have to. I don’t think I’m going to need it, anyway.”

The rising hope in her chest steals her breath. “Did something change? Did it help?”

“I needed to hear you say it. I needed to be punished for it. You spend so much of your time trying to convince me that those things aren’t real, and maybe that might work for somebody else, but I made a career out of dodging the consequences for destructive and irresponsible behavior. Hearing you say it was – I don’t know. It was good. It felt good, to have you acknowledge all the dark little thoughts that drone in my head. And to be forgiven for them.”

“I think I can understand that,” she says, thinking about Gideon Grey and her own self-destructive behaviors. She stopped punishing herself when she realized that listening to her own negative self-talk while trying to convince Nick not to listen to his was the height of hypocrisy. She never sought forgiveness, but she can see why it would be so appealing to someone who never believed in himself at all.

“But I do want to do this again, Judy. In general. I figured out what the secret is. Why it was so hard before.”

“And what’s the secret?”

He leans over to graze his teeth against her ear. He does that sometimes. She doesn’t know whether it’s an intimate thing or some kind of weird predator-eating-prey thing, but it hasn’t ever bothered her. “I let you drive. I trusted you.”

She pulls away to get a proper look into his eyes. “I thought you did trust me already. Am I not-”

He puts a paw over her mouth. “I did. I _do._ I didn’t say that right. What we do has to have a lot of context, and pre-arrangement, and even restrained like that I’m not at your mercy. I know who really has the power here, because I know what kind of mammal you are, and I know that all it would take is a word and you’d never even bring up a scene again with me. There was a moment at the end of the session with the crop where I knew what was coming next. Only the tawse was left. I knew how painful being hit by that thing was, and I was scared of it. I don’t know why. I think we’ve established I’m not afraid of pain. But I was scared, and I was about to safeword out, but I didn’t. I let myself trust you to know my limits and read my body. We’ve spent a long time learning about both of us, but this time I was finally able to let go. It hurt, obviously. I think I was crying? But then it all just left, and the only thing that remained was this idea, this knowledge, that you weren’t going to hurt me. That you loved me. That you would keep me safe. It wasn’t in words like that – really it was more feeling than anything – but nothing bad even existed anymore. You took all my negative words and beat them out of me, which sounds stupid when I say it out loud. But that’s what it was like. I trusted you to be the mammal I know you are, and to treat me as well as you’ve always believed I deserve, and it paid off. I don’t remember the last time I felt this good.”

Tears begin to sting her sinuses, because she’s glad for him and she’s sad that he’s so rarely happy. She knows he hasn’t had much joy in his life, and if this is what it takes, she’ll do it as much as he wants – within the limits of safety and time – because how could she not? Even Ruth, who isn’t privy to the details of their relationship, has commented on how he’s flourished under Judy’s care. He’s not as skinny as he used to be, and he’s put on muscle for work, and he has his own thriving business that pulls in more money than she’ll ever make as a cop. He has a vast network of contacts, legitimate and otherwise, and he’s gained the respect of mammals who would once upon a time have walked past him with their paws clutching their wallets in their pockets. And while bigots shouldn’t matter, that respect matters to him.  

He’s done so much that he can be, and usually _is,_ proud of. He’ll attribute it to her, because he’s still weird about accepting credit for his accomplishments, but the truth is, all she’s ever done is believe in him. She’s a glorified cheerleader. Everything he’s done comes down to his own talents and hard work.

Somehow, instead of sobbing, she manages to laugh through her budding tears. “You’re going to be singing a different tune in the morning.”

“Maybe so,” he acknowledges, “but for the next few days and maybe longer, every so often, I’m going to feel it. I’m going to think of you, and how I feel right now, and be _happy_ all over again.”

* * *

She’s at the market for groceries when she gets the text: _I need you._

Nick doesn’t, as a general rule, need her, even when he does. He never wants it to be obvious, because he hates being vulnerable outside of specific, private situations. So for him to say that he needs her means that she needs to drop what she’s doing and get back home.

 _On my way,_ she replies via text, leaving her basket on a display table. After working retail for years, she feels bad about it, but there’s only a box of cereal in it anyway. Outside, she does a quick calculation and pulls up her Zuber app. Normally she’s reluctant to call a car when she’s got two good feet and a train pass, but this is a special case. Nick needs her enough to admit it.

 _Never mind,_ he texts her, but she rolls her eyes at that.

Once the car is coming, she calls him, but it goes straight to voicemail. She tries not to panic. There are plenty of reasons that would happen. Maybe Ruth called him. Maybe he tried to accept her call and accidentally denied it. Maybe he’s trolling those guys who sometimes come knocking on doors peddling religion. She’s about to call again when the car pulls up and she gets into the back.

“You _can_ ride in the front,” says the driver. “I don’t bite.”

She glances up at the armadillo, rolls her eyes, and replies, _“I_ do. This is for _your_ safety.”

“Suit yourself,” the driver says with a snort, and they’re off. She tries calling again, and it goes directly to voicemail again. She doesn’t want to fret, so she pulls up the e-reader app on her phone and tries to focus on her current book. It’s a terrible, trashy erotic novel about kinky lesbian bunnies that was very clearly written by a heterosexual male who probably isn’t a rabbit, but it was free, and being a poor college student taught her to never turn down free things, no matter how dumb, useless, or full of plot holes they may be.

_Charlie smirked and gestured at her big thick strap-on and said, “Get on your knees, my sweet little slut.”_

_“If it pleases my mistress,” said Hyacinth, dropping immediately. Her mouth watered. She wanted that in her mouth more than anything else she could have, and she only had time to wish that it could be real before Charlotte grabbed her ears to force her mouth around it. She knew how much her mistress liked to fuck her face, so she stayed perfectly still and moaned at the sensation of sculpted cock hitting the back of her throat, imagining how wonderful it would be if Charlie could cum in her mouth like this. She didn’t know any other bunnies with a gag reflex, but she felt so lucky to be able to choke on Charlie’s pulsing erection, even if it was fake._

Cripes, it’s so terrible she’s experiencing secondpaw embarrassment. There wasn’t even a scene transition. One minute they were eating dinner, and the next, Hyacinth was in front of Charlotte – or Charlie, the fact that the descriptive text uses the name sometimes but nobody calls her Charlie out loud is never explained – and Charlotte was somehow wearing a strap-on. Those take time to buckle on. And considering Hyacinth’s earlier declaration that she could never love anyone with a penis, which is...kind of a weird declaration to make and also probably transphobic, now that Judy thinks about it, the sudden hunger for cock makes precisely no sense.

She deletes the book from her library, fighting off the urge to look around and make sure her screen didn’t reflect off any windows, and thanks her lucky stars she didn’t shell out any money for it. But at least it did the job of keeping her entertained and mildly horrified while she got a ride home.

“Thank you,” she tells the driver as she leaves the car. “Have a nice day.”

“You too,” mutters the armadillo, and Judy shuts the door, immediately focused on her next task. Nick needs her.

Their shared apartment at the Grand Pangolin Arms isn’t the best place for privacy, but it’s been home to Judy for six years and home to Nick for two. She can’t imagine living anywhere else, even though they could probably afford to move. She takes the stairs two at a time, rushing past Dharma and the two ESL students she’s tutoring, waving to Félinia, the tiger who likes to make lunches for the school-aged children, and sticking her key in the lock. Nick is predictable this way. Even though this community is willing and able to defend the entire building from outsiders, he’s still careful about locking their door even when they’re in their space.

Also predictably, Nick’s wedged himself in the corner behind their new restraint apparatus. Sometimes, when he’s feeling particularly vulnerable, he likes to keep his back to the wall and his eyes to the exit, even when there’s no danger. He has his phone plugged into the outlet next to him, using the short cord so he can pretend he has a legitimate reason to sit there. Judy isn’t fooled, but it’s not really about fooling her. It’s _principle._ Sometimes Nick needs his illusions. Sometimes she’s willing to turn a blind eye, but not today.

“I said never mind,” he tells her, sounding annoyed.

“You could have been at gunpoint or something,” she counters, not because she really believes that, but because it’s a good excuse. “What kind of partner would I be if I ignored the possibility?”

“A smart one.”

“A negligent one, and you know that’s not who I am. I love you.”

He curls his lip. “Of course you’d say that.”

“Yes, because it’s true.” She’s not going to get angry with him, because this isn’t Nick being a jerk, this is something else. “I’m allowed. You say it to me, after all.”

“And maybe I’m lying.” Her nose twitches and she kneels down in front of him. Like this, he’s just about at eye level. She reaches out to touch his face, but he pushes her paw away. “Don’t _touch_ me.”

“I...I’m sorry.” She tugs on her ear-tip, unsure of where to go with this. “What’s going on, Nick?”

“Nothing. Back off, okay? You’re really hard to love sometimes, you know that?”

She tries not to show on her face how much that hurts. She thinks she knows why he’s saying it, but there will always be a little part of her that takes what mammals say at face value. It used to get her into trouble back in Bunnyburrow, usually because she couldn’t always tell the difference between a sarcastic taunt and a genuine compliment and basically forced her unwanted presence on peers who didn’t like her as much as she thought they did. Judy knows in her head that this isn’t the same at all. Her heart isn’t listening, but that’s not important right now. She can sort herself out later.

“Okay. Tell me why. Tell me what I need to work on,” she encourages. He shoots her a dirty look, which she expected. Sometimes getting him to open up is like trying to pull a weed, and if she doesn’t go deep enough the problem grows even more. Smiling gently, she asks, “What am I doing wrong?”

“You’re so _pushy._ You get – affectionate, over-enthusiastic, and it’s weird, and you say you love me all the time. Like I’m some dumb kit who’s going to forget you said it five minutes ago. This may come as a surprise to you, but your confidence issues are _not my problem.”_ Before she can even properly process what he just said, his expression changes to one of shock. “I can’t believe I just said that to you. It wasn’t even true.”

“It’s a little true,” she replies carefully. Yeah, it stung, and yeah, it’s _also_ something she needs to work on. “I’m not unaware of my...uh...tendency to overwhelm.”

“No, not that. I like that you push me. That’s what it took for me to get the message in the first place. I can’t believe I called – what is _wrong_ with me?”

“I think…” She reaches out to take his paw and breathes easier when he allows it. “I think this is something I read about. Madame Moon calls it the big drop on her blog, and she said it probably wouldn’t happen to you, but I planned for it anyway. You know me, good little Bunny Scout, always prepared for anything. It’s not common, and it’s not ideal, but it’s happening, and we can deal with it. Just tell me what you’re feeling right now.”

“I – I feel crazy,” he says, gripping her paw tightly. “There is literally no reason to be angry with you. Everything you’ve done these past two days has been _for me._ You’ve put yourself out there for me. You’ve pushed past your comfort zone for me. But as soon as you left, it was...the first thing I thought was that you weren’t coming back. You went out to get _breakfast cereal,_ for fuck’s sake, and I thought you were leaving me. Not only was that completely irrational, but then I was angry at you for leaving me, like you don’t have a right to leave if you’re not happy. And I’m still mad. You’re here right now holding my paw and trying to help me and I’m mad at you for this fictional leaving that apparently I still think you’re doing. It’s insane. _I’m_ insane.”

She shakes her head, rubbing her thumb over his finger. Her paw is too small to encompass his like his does to hers, but she tries her best. “You’re not. What we did the other day...it’s like when mammals start taking antidepressants for the first time. It’s a swift kick in the brain chemistry. You got all these feel-good hormones rushing through your system, but you weren’t used to that, and now your body doesn’t know what to do, especially since that rush of hormones isn’t happening anymore. You’re not crazy, Nick. You’re _not._ Look, I – get dressed, and I’ll take you to that fancy pâtisserie on Lingonberry, the one that serves French press coffee.”

“I don’t feel like going out.”

“I know,” she says, leaning forward to caress his face now that he’s not pushing her away, “but trust me, you need it. Hiding in here isn’t going to make you feel better. Madame Moon said if this happened, the best way to deal with it would be to have you experience things that usually make you feel good. You love coffee and pastries, and you love being out in the sun. You don’t feel good right now, and that’s okay.”

“I just hurt you _on purpose._ It’s not okay,” he says with a glare at his lap.

“It _is_ okay. You’re allowed to feel stuff. You’re allowed to feel anxious, or get angry, or anything else. We’re going to get you through it, but in order to do that I need you to do something uncomfortable. It’s like draining pus out of a wound to get at the clean blood and heal.”

“That’s disgusting,” he tells her, standing and letting go of her paw. “I’m going to get dressed, but only because I might throw up if you keep talking about pus.”

Which was, she thinks, the whole reason she brought it up. But she won’t tell him that until he’s feeling better. _When_ she does, he’s going to be proud of her for tricking him. Well, he probably already knows, but he’ll be in a place to laugh with her about it.

* * *

He looks better once he has some coffee in front of him. She knew he would. They’re outside on the patio, the table between them covered in pastries and coffee items. Mostly the coffee items. Nick likes his coffee horrendously sweet, so there are open sugar packets everywhere, and the press and mugs are larger ones made for mid-sized mammals. With the sun beating down on them, Judy feels a little too warm, but Nick loves sunshine, so she loves it by proxy.

She nibbles at a raspberry macaron and watches him watch the other patrons. One of the things she loves about him – there are too many things she loves about him to count them all – is the way he can sit quietly and not get awkward. Judy enjoys chatting, but she doesn’t enjoy feeling like she _has_ to. It’s always a sign of a good relationship when you can comfortably be silent with each other. It’s an undervalued form of intimacy that’s just as enjoyable as kissing him. He reaches up to touch his collar, running the pad of his finger along the tooled pattern, and she feels another swell of affection. He doesn’t care what other mammals think anymore. She used to worry about what conclusions might be drawn, considering that Nick is a fox and Judy is a bunny, but nobody really says anything even when they notice.

Good old Zootopia: where anyone can wear anything.

“You’re staring,” he says, raising a brow.

“Can’t help it. You’re too handsome for your own good,” she replies with a shrug.

“Ha.” He takes a breath and releases it. His shoulders lose their tension. “You were right, by the way. I needed this.”

“So you’re feeling better?”

He looks at her sideways, a sly grin sliding onto his face. “In a way. You have no idea how fun it is to be feeling these bruises in public. These mammals will probably never know how great it is. I’m still sore, and they have _no idea.”_

She slips her foot up his pant leg under the table, and his smile grows just a bit. He loves it when she does this, usually. She suspects he’s a bit of an exhibitionist, or at least, he likes the idea that they could get caught doing something less than innocent. She might find it thrilling too, were she not about to start at Precinct 1. She can’t risk her reputation or her job. “You like pulling one over on mammals, don’t you?”

“Yeah, but I kind of wish I could tell everyone. Sometimes all I want to do is shout about how amazing you are and how out of all the mammals you could have picked, you chose _me._ I get to belong to you. That makes me the luckiest fox in all of Zootopia, probably Animalia, maybe even the whole world.”

“Darn it, Nick, you’re going to make my heart explode if you keep saying stuff like that,” she says, hoping her voice isn’t as high as it sounds. It’s always a little overwhelming when he’s enthusiastic about caring for her. She’s really good at facing negative commentary, but although being with Nick for so long has helped her learn how to accept positive feedback too, it’s still much harder.

Proving mammals wrong is easy. Proving them right is much more tricky.

“Deal with it. If it hasn’t happened to me, it won’t happen to you,” he says into his mug before taking a sip, and it’s a fair point. She’s just as sappy. They’re probably embarrassing to _listen to,_ but the upside to that is the joy of pissing off bigots who hate interspecies couples. Another thing she’s learned after being with Nick for so long is that trolling is almost as satisfying as changing mammals’ minds.

She takes her foot out of his pant leg and runs her toes up further, kneading his thigh. His breathing gets a little shallower than it was before. Fair is fair; if he gets to tease her, she gets to tease him. “You’re right. We should be able to deal with things that make us uncomfortable.”

(Though he’d probably just sit there shamelessly if she gave him a paw job under the table, so this isn’t really a challenge.)

He takes a sip of coffee and watches her, eyebrows raised. She moves up further, running the ball of her foot just above his testicles. He shifts, but otherwise doesn’t react. The _problem,_ she reflects, is that they’ve gotten very good about being sneaky and quiet. Their walls are paper thin and sometimes they want to have some intimacy without involving the rest of the building. It’s great for silent sex, but not so great for taunting him. Good thing this is just play.

“I’ve missed you,” he says eventually. “It’ll be nice to see each other every day again.”

“I’ve missed you too. I should have been better at texting while I was at the academy.”

“I should have too. You’re not the only one responsible. I was busy with cases, you were busy with training...but I don’t want that to be us. I don’t ever want to have to regret not communicating with you. I think that’s what had me so freaked out earlier, even though in retrospect it’s really stupid. I just got you back. You’re about to start a dangerous job. I’m sure you’ll handle yourself, but that won’t stop me from worrying about whether you’re going to get hurt.”

She smiles softly. “Now you know how I feel. Every time you go spy on some cheating jerk, I worry you’re going to get beaten up or worse. We’re both competent mammals. It’s just a worry.”

“Exactly.” He points at her. “But my job is your fault. I was happy to just hustle mammals out of their money. You infected me with your concern for others.”

“Dreadfully sorry, Nick. I’ll make it up to you somehow. Oh! When we get home, I’ll get out the gloves and give you a prostate massage,” she promises with a caress of her foot. “I’m going to spoil you so thoroughly this week you’ll be insufferable for the next three.”

“You’re damn right I will,” he replies, but although his tone is teasing, his smile is genuine. He’s only openly expressive when he wants to be. She considers herself lucky that he considers her worth the risk and effort.

She puts her paw on his across the table. “And about the rest...never worry about telling me what’s going on, all right? We’re a team. You’re my partner. You might think something’s dumb, and if it is, we’ll figure that out together. If it isn’t, it’s better to talk about it anyway. I don’t only love you when it’s easy, and that’s not going to change.”

“I know,” he tells her, turning over his paw to give hers a somewhat awkward squeeze.

The truth is, their jobs are going to be dangerous, and it’s likely that they’ll always worry about each other. The truth is, one day someone might knock on their door to deliver her blood-soaked badge to Nick, and one day she might have to bury him because he got a little too deep into something he underestimated. The truth is, that’s not a reason to stop loving each other or stop doing what they love. If anything, it’s a reason to push harder, communicate better, and love more deeply. If every intimate moment might be their last, it’s important to make sure neither of them has misgivings or regrets.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The gloves Judy mentions are actually gloves of my own design. A lot of animals have non-retractable claws (foxes and rabbits included), which means that sexual fingering is dangerous without protection. An animal society would have found a way around this. Basically, you put on flexible plastic/silicone tips just a tiny bit longer than your claws. Then you wear nitrile gloves over those and use plenty of lube. In my headcanon, most people just prefer to use toys or tongues for penetrative play, but if you’re trying to make a prostate massage as comfortable and intimate as possible, it’s best to use your finger instead of a toy because it's smaller and you can control your hand. Why do I think about this stuff? No idea.


	3. A Day at the Office

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Judy's first day at Precinct 1 doesn't exactly go as planned. Nick helps her pick up the pieces. Also they fuck. Mostly the second one.

She’s angry and sad and tired, and her parents tried calling, but she turned her phone off and took out the battery so that it wouldn’t turn itself on again. She doesn’t want to talk to them. She doesn’t really want to talk at all. What she wants is her boyfriend, because he’s probably the only mammal in her life who won’t either tell her she had it coming for trying to be something bunnies aren’t supposed to be, or be happy for the same reason that she’s miserable.

Today was garbage. Pure, unfiltered garbage. A dumpster fire of a day.

Judy Hopps has a degree in Criminology from ZU. She worked her tail off for two years to graduate at the top of her class at the academy. She set records on the firing range and she’s the first mammal since 1985 to get a perfect score on every written exam. She took down every classmate, including a rhinoceros, in the ring – not because she needed to, but because she wanted to make a _point_ that bunnies are just as good as any other mammal – and, perhaps stupidly, she thought that would be enough. But it wasn’t. Of _course_ it wasn’t. Why would it be?

Judy Hopps worked her tail off to make it onto an elite squad of officers, and they gave her an orange vest and ticket printer.

Meter minding is a civilian job. A “meter maid” is not an officer. Parking duty is not, and never has been, a real cop’s job; not for rookies, not for discipline. This isn’t a way to ease her into things, or a temporary assignment until they can find a suitable partner for her. It’s a punishment for being a bunny. After living in the big city for six years, Judy thought she was ready to face prejudice and bigotry in the workplace, but she was unprepared to get a blast of it from her own boss. And even worse, she had to scrub cement off of herself at the station after being pushed into a patch of it by an angry driver.

But she was planning on seducing Nick after work and let her feet do the steering instead of her head, so here she stands, in a skirt short enough that a stripper would raise an eyebrow, wondering if she really should walk into his office like this. She doesn’t feel very sexy. She feels, for the first time in a long time, worthless. She feels cheap and stupid.

_“What were they thinking, letting a bunny in,” asked Swinton, pulling off her shirt and throwing it into her duffel bag._

_“No idea,” Rivers replied with a shrug, picking up her own bag. “Can’t imagine how many dicks she had to take to pull it off. It’s a wonder she’s not bowlegged. At least in that cute little vest she’s not our problem.”_

If Judy hadn’t taken a shower after work, she wouldn’t have heard that conversation, and that stings just as badly as the words themselves. Those weren’t words meant to hurt her. Swinton and Rivers had no idea she was in the locker room with them. They really think that about her. Does everyone think that?

“Damn, Hopps, you look like a picture,” says Ian, Nick’s associate, as he comes out the door. She steps aside to let him through. “Tell you what, look me up when Nick breaks your heart.”

“You say that again and I’ll break your face,” she threatens dully, recycling one of Finnick’s favorites. It’s an old exchange between them. She isn’t really friends with the gray fox, probably because Ian doesn’t have any friends, but he’s a reliable employee and his crassness is a careful affectation.

His smarmy smile turns into a frown. “Hey. Are you okay?”

“Think of the least okay you’ve ever felt, and that’s probably where I am.”

“Well, Nick’s the only one in there, so…” He shrugs. “Good luck I guess.”

She tries to smile. It doesn’t work. “Has anyone ever told you how incredibly bad you are at comforting someone?”

He snorts and waves over his shoulder as he walks away. “I’m allergic to feelings, honey bunny. Go kiss your boyfriend and tell me if I need to go crack somebody’s skull.”

That’s Ian in a nutshell.

She takes a deep breath, stands up straight, and walks into the office, closing and locking the door behind her. She really doesn’t feel sexy at all, but maybe she’ll feel better after a good romp. She usually does. It won’t make the bad things go away, but it might make them easier to deal with.

Nick, sitting behind his desk and looking very adorable scowling down at his tablet, looks up at her. His scowl turns into a brilliant smile. He’s always so happy to see her. She represses the urge to fidget, but she can’t quite meet his gaze when she says, “Hey, Nick. How was work today?”

“I should be asking you that, Supercop. You – oh.” His eyes go wide as she drops her bag on the floor to give him a look at her skirt. At least she still has that, she thinks, surprising herself with her level of cynicism. She usually feels flattered when he looks at her like she’s the prettiest thing in the world, but not today. It still feels like a cheap trick. It’s irrational and weird, but she doesn’t want to take her clothes off because then he’ll _see_ her.

“I came straight here,” she informs him with a smile that hurts her face. She crosses the room and pulls his chair over toward the center of the room, with him still in it, before locking the wheels. She lifts her leg to drag her foot along the crotch of his slacks, not because she thinks it’ll be incredibly arousing, but to show him how little her undies are. They’re red, thin enough to be nearly sheer, and don’t even come close to covering her butt. Judy had to make sure to avoid getting close to any small mammals on the way over just to avoid public indecency charges, but the shake in his paws as he squeezes her calf is worth the hassle.

“Good day, then?”

She can forgive him for the question, because he’s distracted and because she’s not sure she’d be able to express how bad her day was anyway. She hums noncommittally and kneels, leaning forward. She reaches for his button, intent on blowing him as soon as she can, but he catches one of her paws and puts his other paw under her chin. “Judy.”

“Yes, _Nick?”_

He shudders, obviously trying to control his breathing. She knows his turn-ons, his tells. If she really wanted to fight dirty, she could, but she just wants to stop thinking. He frowns as she lowers her lids to make it impossible for him to look her in the eye. “The hell are you doing?”

“Well, I was _trying_ to seduce you, but maybe I’ve lost my touch,” she replies.

“No. No, you haven’t. But I’ve only seen you shy away from a hard conversation once, and that was a _doozy,_ so I’m more concerned with what happened today.”

“It doesn’t matter,” she lies. He begins to say something, but she puts her paw over his mouth. “It can matter later, if you want it to, but right now I need you. Can I touch you?”

He nods and lets her go, and she repeats, “I need you.”

“You need – _fuck,_ you – need.” This part, where he fights for composure while she unbuttons him and reaches in to stroke in all the right places, is one of the best parts. He’s so gorgeous like this, and he’s so much _bigger_ than she is but he’s like clay in her paws, and that makes her feel powerful. “This is a need?”

Usually she’s more careful about her phrasing, because Nick will drop what he’s doing to attend to her needs. They both do it, probably more than they should, and she doesn’t want to be the kind of mammal who takes advantage of others, _especially_ him. She doesn’t want him to feel pressured into this, so she backtracks. “I don’t – it’s not – you don’t have to, if you don’t want to.”

“I want to. God, I want to, I just don’t want you to get hurt.”

She laughs and steps away, turning around to grip the side of the desk. She wiggles her rear at him, looking at him over her shoulder without looking him in the eye, and says, “You won’t hurt me. You should come over here and fuck me.”

His mouth opens slightly. She’s never really understood why cursing turns him on, but it does. She can hear his heart and the way his breathing hitches just before he closes the gap and pulls her close. His large, careful paws caress her from behind, one skating down to hitch up her skirt and the other sliding up beneath her blouse, claws running gently through her fur. She closes her eyes and leans her head back against his chest, allowing herself to just _feel_ as he runs the pad of his index finger along the crotch of her underwear. She gasps and wriggles when he narrows his focus to rubbing circles over her clitoris, nibbling on her ear. He knows how to get to her. He’s allowed to get to her.

Judy’s always been sensitive, sexually. She never told anyone before Nick, but sometimes if she knew it was coming, she would warm herself up before the main event. Rub herself to completion once through her panties so that by the time someone else touched her, she’d be ready to _be_ touched. Nick has never questioned how much preparation she sometimes needs, possibly because she was his first and possibly because he doesn’t mind doing the work. Maybe he just doesn’t know it’s not the norm. Whatever the case, he’s perfectly willing to take his time, layer by layer, until she’s writhing and dripping and unlikely to get hurt. He’s so...perfectly, wonderfully sweet. That’s just not what she needs right now.

She reaches up to put one paw behind his neck, the other finding the ring of his collar to bring his head down to her neck. Her scent always gets him in the way that his noises always get her. He groans softly into her shoulder, tapping her clit in a dizzying rhythm. His other paw keeps tracing shapes on her chest, lines against her collarbones and circles around her navel scar. The addition of gentle teeth at her pulse point sends her rushing toward the edge, and the thing about Nick is that he never teases her unless she asks him to, so he doesn’t pull away or switch it up, just rushes right there with her.

She reaches down to wiggle out of her underwear, still pulling at his collar so he has no choice but to bend with her as she grinds her backside against his groin. He makes that noise again, slightly distressed, mostly turned on. Does he know what that does to her? His forefinger goes back to circling her clit, not exactly making contact but close enough to be stimulating, and she stops caring what he knows. She moves her paw back up to his neck to help her arch her back dramatically, hoping to speed up the painfully slow process of getting him hard. It seems to work well enough; his grip tightens, his circles become irregular, and he thrusts forward.

 _“Judy,”_ he moans into her shoulder.

“Quiet,” she says, tugging sharply on the ring, before letting go and leaning forward to brace herself on his desk. He’s out enough that this will work. “Just fuck me.”

He whines in his chest and mumbles something like _yes ma’am_ before he removes his finger and she hears the slip of his pants falling all the way to the ground. She feels him again, unobstructed, against the small of her back, before he bends his knees, _lifts her up,_ and guides himself into her. She’s only raised onto the balls of her feet, because his legs are shorter relative to his body length, but with Nick standing up straight between her legs, this new pressure is fantastic. Gravity is doing the work that normally she’d have to do herself, and since he’s pressing in from behind, there’s less to worry about.

She cries out, in a good way, and does it again when he begins to thrust again. It’s been a long time since she’s allowed anyone to take the lead during coitus, but this isn’t bad. He’s firm and solid behind her, setting a rhythm synced to his soft grunts in the air. As he brings one paw around to focus on her clitoris again, he leans forward, and the other goes to the desk in front of them. She clenches around his penis and watches as his claws dig into the soft wood, and she –

_seventeen years old, claws in her cheek and a mouth full of dirt_

– moans and grabs for his collar again, a lifeline to keep her afloat in this overwhelming wave of pleasure. He thrusts faster, growls, a sound that radiates through her, rattling her chest and settling hot in her pelvis. She’s breathless and helpless and needs to bite down on something, so she stretches forward to nip his wrist. The sudden shift of weight pulls them almost completely apart at the hips, Nick’s paw trapped between her vulva and the side of the desk, and the breath goes out of them both.

Nick recovers quickly as she arches. He rolls the arm she bit to lie flat on the table, pulls her into a better position with the other, and offers his fingers to bite at her leisure. She sucks one of them into her mouth and he whines, speeding up again, but he doesn’t come undone until she does bite down. She can feel him warm and pulsing inside of her, but her focus diminishes to his frantic rubbing of her clit until there’s no focus at all.

“Okay,” he says, panting, removing his paw from her mouth and using it to balance while they recover. She can still feel him inside of her. “Okay. That happened.”

“Yeah,” she replies.

“Want to tell me why?”

She freezes. She didn’t expect him to ask while she was still sitting on his cock. She’d hoped he would wait. He lifts her up and sets her down on her feet, but doesn’t let go. “Didn’t you – didn’t you enjoy it? Don’t you want to go again?”

He sighs heavily. She feels him lean back and hears a thump before he puts his paws under her thighs and leans back to land in his desk chair. The position of his paws keeps her from falling, but also makes it impossible for her to be comfortable anywhere but leaning against his chest. He moves his paws carefully and hugs her tightly, restricting her movement. “You have no idea. But you know what I want more? An explanation.”

“This _can’t_ be comfortable.”

He hisses when she presses against him, but doesn’t take the bait. “You’re the one who needs multiple orgasms, not me. There’s give and take in every relationship. You said you needed this, and I’m happy to give it to you, because I’m in love with you and I like being close to you. But _I_ need to know why. Without knowing, continuing would just kind of feel...gross.”

And here she is, vulnerable again. She opens her mouth to give him something, anything, but what comes out is, “I’m gross?”

“What,” he says flatly.

“Sorry. That’s not what I meant.”

“I think it is.” He scratches her belly under her shirt. “And if I had to guess, I’d say you wanted to prove that I still want you, though I can’t fathom why that would even be a question. Don’t you – _shit,_ Judy, stay still for a second, I’m sensitive – don’t you think it’d be easier to just tell me what’s going on?”

“I fell in wet cement today,” she confesses, trying not to move her hips back and forth. She wants to make him hard again, but ignoring him when he says _no_ is not part of what they do. “Originally I reported that someone pushed me, but I was informed by my superior officer that my recollection of the incident was incorrect.”

“What,” he says again.

“I worked for years to become the best,” she presses on, tugging at her own ear. “You know what that means?”

“You’re the best,” he tells her through a sigh. He already knows where this is going, she’s sure of it, but now she needs to say it out loud.

“Maybe that’s what it means for a wolf or a rhino. You know what all that hard work and dedication means when you’re a bunny?”

“Oh, _no.”_

“I means exactly nothing. It means an orange vest and parking duty. It means coworkers wondering how many mammals you _slept with_ to get the job. It means a Chief who looks at you like you’re a pile of crap he just stepped in. It means you’re worth so little that they’d rather let an aggressive driver get away with assaulting an officer than get you set up in the system properly. All I want right now is to succeed at something and I haven’t even – haven’t even gotten you off properly, you usually have two – so I even fail at being a stereotype. Maybe I _am_ gross. Maybe I just suck and we’re the last ones to get the memo.”

“Okay, hang on, Sweetheart,” he says, lifting her off of his lap. Fortunately, he only turns her around so that her legs are to the side and he can look in her eyes. Normally she doesn’t like being handled like this, but right now she’s just grateful that she doesn’t have to make this decision. When she’s situated again, he asks, “Is that what you really think?”

“No. Yes. I don’t know, if you’d asked me that this morning I would’ve said no for sure, but none of this makes sense otherwise. I don’t know what I did wrong.”

“Nothing. You can’t blame yourself. You can’t – you’re not responsible for anybody else’s bigotry, and that’s all this is. The same stupid stuff you dealt with when you started the academy. You didn’t let me internalize it when we met and I’m not going to let you internalize it now. It’s _not_ your job to prove that you matter.”

“Normally I’d agree with you, but these are professionals employed by the government. Anti-discrimination laws exist. They wouldn’t risk their jobs on bigotry...right?”

“You say that like most mammals question their rationality. As much as I’d love to be able to just tell you that jerks are jerks on purpose, the truth is, speciesism is rarely conscious. They believe they’re in the right. _Coming from the moral high ground.”_ Judy winces as she remembers the things her old classmate Kevin said to Nick that day he showed up on campus with fancy coffees and a business proposition, the blatant anti-fox rhetoric, and Nick’s retorts that were secretly just as painful to Judy as they would have been to Kevin. “If it were as easy as deliberate behavior we’d have cut out the problem a long time ago.”

“I just...wanted it to be real,” she admits, leaning her cheek on his chest. His arms go all the way around her, but it doesn’t feel like a cage, it feels like safety. It feels like home.

Nick laughs quietly. “It will be. You’re a force of nature. I’ve known you for four years and you have never _not_ gotten what you wanted. We’ll find a way to make it work. You’ve never given up on me, and I’m not giving up on you. This is Zootopia, Carrots, where anyone can say anything. And if the right mammals say the right things to the right mammals, well, anything can happen.”

She snorts as the tension finally runs out of her. “You’re going to use your network to blackmail my boss, aren’t you?”

“I would never,” he says slyly. “That would be _wrong._ But it’s out of my paws if some of my acquaintances, who like you very much, happen to complain about your poor treatment in front of, say, Dawn Bellwether.”

“Nick! You can’t! Then nobody’s going to believe I have what it takes!”

“Trust me,” he advises, lacing their paws together, “once you get the chance to show them what you’re made of, they’ll be lining up to beg your forgiveness. And what do we do when we’ve got them where we want them?”

“Take ‘em for all they got,” she answers, “and seduce their mothers while we’re at it.”

“That’s my girl,” says Nick proudly, and leans down to press a kiss between her ears.

“For as long as you’ll have me,” she agrees, and brings his paw up to her mouth to kiss his knuckles. She means it. She can’t imagine a life without him. And she believes him when he says they’ll get through it. Together, they can get through anything.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Real question here, is anyone else really tired of formulaic smut? Also, can we have an anthology focused on female pleasure? The next time I come across some variant of the words “It hurts, but keep doing what you’re doing” I might throw up. NO. If it hurts, someone’s doing something wrong, and it can almost always be solved with communication and creativity. Everybody’s supposed to be having fun and it is never, ever, _ever_ “supposed” to hurt. Also? Unless your partner has told you they get turned on by it and given you permission to do so, don’t fucking shame someone for being really wet before sex. The more lubrication, the better. I’m trying not to soapbox here but jfc whoever keeps telling people that sexual discomfort/pain is normal needs to stop.


End file.
